Google Earth Beta 4.2

Time for another free software post. One of the coolest free software downloads ever, is google earth. I don't think I'll waste your time telling you about it because you have either used it or at least have seen it. The new interface is clean. The thing I noticed right off is it is much faster and the map data is even better. They say that 30% of the world's population can now see their homes. If you run windows, mac or linux, which should cover pretty much everyone, you can download it here.

GeeVee the Youtube for video games and gamers - plus Metal Gear Solid 4 Trailer

First off I'd like to say sorry for not updating like I should. I've taken over as the video editor at work and have been working like crazy. It's been exhausting but I do love the work.

So speaking of videos. Unless you're still on dial-up, you've been to youtube, googlevideo, collegehumor.com, break.com or any of the other zillion video content sites. Now there is one for video gamers. GeeVee.com is a cool video game community site. You can choose from lots of different categories of user submitted videos. Ever want to prove to the world that you are the master of your favorite game? Perhaps you want to see how to complete a certain level that you have been stuck on for a week. Would you like to demonstrate your Counter Strike pwnage? Ready to show off what you and your clan can do? There's also sections for secrets, glitches, reviews, and unreleased games.

GeeVee is not just for PC's, there's Xbox360 and PS3 video games as well. If you would like to post any of the videos on the site, they include a line of code that you can copy and paste to a website, forum, or blog. The video quality is also superior to youtube, which I will now demonstrate below with a trailer from Metal Gear Solid 4

Use Your Computer To Help The World

I'll add to this post when I'm not so tired but I had to get this out there. It uses your computer to fight cancer, fight aids and more...

www.worldcommunitygrid.org

NZ Botnet Teen Faces Extradition

New details have been released about the New Zealand teen who is one of the most recent, and youngest, snared by the FBI in an operation dubbed Bot Roast II. Multiple arrests and convictions have come from this FBI sting.

Owen Walker, an 18 year old from Whitianga, New Zealand, is suspected of creating malicious software that took control of over a million computers. The FBI also believes AKILL, Walker's online handle or nick name, is "the ringleader of an elite international botnet coding group" and has caused "more than $25 million in economic loss". If evidence is found that warrants charges, Walker could be charged either in New Zealand or extradited and charged in the United States.

So far eight others, here in the U.S., have been charged in relation to the FBI's investigation of Walker's software. Three of them have been sentenced with jail terms of 12 to 47 months.

Botnets are comprised of computers which have been infected with malicious software. These computers are also known as "zombies" and can be used to for various illegal activities. Some "zombies" are used for phishing scams, identify theft, spam, network attacks, and scanning for vulnerable computers and websites which they can then install the botnet software on. People who contol these botnets are known as bot herders. Some bot herders have control of millions of computers. Currently it is estimated that there are approximately 150 million botnet infected computers.

XP Faster Than Vista - No Suprise

For all those who upgraded to Windows Vista on their current XP machine, this is no surprise. When Vista came out, I set up my best computer as a dual boot. When I fired up my computer, I could choose Vista or XP. To make a long story short, I completely removed Vista after about a month of use.

Now someone has done "real world" tests of Vista vs XP on 3 of his computers. It comes as no surprise to me, or anyone else who has tried a Vista upgrade, that it is slower than XP.

The article is well written and explains all the places that Vista suffers performance decreases. You can find it here at The Register / regdeveloper


Oh Microsoft, after all those years of development, why have you done this to us?

AMD flaw causes slowdowns

If you have been looking for one of AMD's quad core "Barcelona" Opterons, you have probably noticed they have been hard to find. They came out a couple months ago but after searching newegg, I couldn't find any

It turns out that they suffer from errata, which is chip-level problems. Errata is not uncommon, however the severity level can be minor to major. In this case it appears to be major. This issue first came to light with the delay of AMD's 2.4GHz version of its Phenom desktop processor. It's so sever that AMD has issued a "stop-ship" for the Barcelona.

AMD is issuing a BIOS fix. According to an AMD spokesperson, the BIOS fix will impact performance 10-20%. While the test units sent out earlier to the press did not have the fix. I'd wager that the performance decrease is closer to %20 seeing how this information is comming from AMD's own spokesperson.

For more detail about this, you can head on over to techreport.com for an in depth article.

The Rise of Video Blogs & Free Software

Video blogs, vlogs, vidcasts, or whatever you want to call them, are really on the rise. I started watching rocketboom quite some time ago. Recently I started hunting around for more and found there are a lot out there. Some of the big players in broadcasting have also started releasing them too.

With so many available to watch, wouldn't it be nice if there was some software that would let you subscribe to them and view them all in one place? Enter miro. Miro lets you subscribe to all your favorite vidcasts and automaticly download them as they are released. It also has a good sized index, so it is a good place to seek out new ones. It has a built in player that allows you to view them and if you pause it, you can continue watching where you left off, automatically. If there is one you like and it's not in miro's index, which currently has over 3000 channels, you can add it. If you already subscribe to some with another program, like iTunes, you can set up a watch directory and miro will import them. You can also search the entire index for any video. Another feature will let you email a link, of any of the videos, to your friends. Maybe you don't have a ton of space on your hard drive, not a problem, you can set miro to automatically delete content after a certain amout of time.

How much would you pay for a cool piece of software like this? Don't worry, it's free! So don't just sit there, head on over to www.getmiro.com and see what you have been missing.